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House Votes To Expand National DNA Arrest Database
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from CNET: "Millions of Americans arrested for but not convicted of crimes will likely have their DNA forcibly extracted and added to a national database, according to a bill approved by the US House of Representatives on Tuesday. By a 357 to 32 vote, the House approved legislation that will pay state governments to require DNA samples, which could mean drawing blood with a needle, from adults 'arrested for' certain serious crimes. Not one Democrat voted against the database measure, which would hand out about $75 million to states that agree to make such testing mandatory. ... But civil libertarians say DNA samples should be required only from people who have been convicted of crimes, and argue that if there is probable cause to believe that someone is involved in a crime, a judge can sign a warrant allowing a blood sample or cheek swab to be forcibly extracted."
I dont believe that this is constitutional, or at least its not of the same spirit as the constitution.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
I would like to add a line amendment that anyone running for any government elected position also be required to submit DNA to the database.
What is good for the goose.
You know what to do, guys. Call into the anonymous tipline and accuse all of your Congressmen of burglary.
FTFY
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Wouldn't the results from a DNA test of a cheek swab of someone arrested for prostitution be, uh, somewhat confusing?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Sounds about as sensible as registering as a sex offender some 18 year old who had consensual sex with a 17 year old.
We are all God's parents.
Seriously. Where is all this pressure to bypass warrants coming from?
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I didn't read through the entire bill, but the part I read talked about people arrested for sexual crimes and murder -- nothing about burglary that I could see. The biggest problem I have with it is that while it has a process for expungement of people who are acquitted or whose guilty verdict is overturned, I didn't see anything in there requiring states to initiate the process when one of these events occurs.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
That went out the door with the USA PATRIOT act. Now we're guilty, period.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Sometime in the middle of the night, Karl Rove had the Democrat representatives kidnapped, cloned and their brains replaced with aging Republican brains so they could vote for this fascist law.
The original Democrats were then sent back in time thru a secret NSA time portal where the were placed on airliners and crashed into the WTC and the Pentagon.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
The law dosen't apply to white-collar crimes. Guess that means we can steal all of our neighbors' money as long as we don't break into their houses.
Somewhere in the Middle East, there is a group of Al Qaeda operatives sitting around smoking hookah under a banner that reads "Mission Accomplished"
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Call into the anonymous tipline and accuse all of your Congressmen of buggery.
Fixed that.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Seriously. Where is all this pressure to bypass warrants coming from?
An apathetic citizentry kills democracy faster than any group's ambitions.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
This is just a horrible, horrible idea. And once the government gets a hold of your DNA:
* You will have no idea what it is used for, by whom, nor how often
* You will never really be able to get that data removed
* You will be put in a position to have to prove innocence instead of being assumed innocent
* You are giving up yet more control over your life and privacy to the government
* The data WILL be used to make assumptions about you
* Your DNA data WILL be unreasonably searched, every time a search is done, and without probable cause
* The data WILL be shared with other agencies- state and fed
* The data WILL be leaked in one way or another
* The data WILL be used to also implicate others in your family with "close" DNA profiles
There are lots of other ramifications, these are just the ones that pop into my mind immediately. Perhaps it is time to Email/Fax/Call your Senator and tell them what you think before the House gets its way... http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
The United States Senate thinks sharing photos is risky, but sharing DNA is okay. To become a US Senator, is it a requirement to lose all sense of perspective?
I find it ironic that the US should decide to introduce this measure under a new government when the old one was notorious for abuse of authority.
Meanwhile, here in the UK, we just handed electoral annihilation to the administration that introduced a similar guilt-by-suspicion DNA system here, not long after the European level courts ruled that keeping innocent people's DNA on the database indefinitely was illegal anyway.
One of the first proposals brought up by our new coalition government, indeed one of the points where both parties agreed on almost everything despite their general political differences, was a "Freedom Bill". That will basically be a mass repeal of all the draconian, intrusive, guilt-assuming laws that the previous lot brought in under a climate of fear that they perpetuated more effectively from the corridors of power than any terrorist group ever could. Introducing safeguards so that innocents' DNA is removed from the database in a timely fashion will be an acid test of that bill: they've talked the talk, now will they really follow through?
DNA evidence is increasingly used to convict even where the rest of the evidence is tenuous at best. Jurors, who mostly do not understand the science behind DNA, will accept that DNA evidence must mean the accused is guilty. The problem is that there are many ways in which an innocent person can be convicted on the basis of DNA "evidence". First of all we have cross-contamination of a crime scene. Next up. cross contamination (or downright incompetence) in the lab. Next we have increasing evidence that the current science behind DNA forensic analysis is not fool-proof: the tests only look for a finite number of specific markers on the DNA sample, and it appears that there is a non-zero chance that you share a genetic fingerprint with some other person. In fact the methods used are so weak that you may even share a marker with someone who is a different race than you. As the available DNA database grows the chances of such a false positive also increases.
In the UK, we are about to start toning our database down.
You are unfortunate as you don't have any real Liberals in your government as we now do...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Darn, the 'insightful' meter stops at 5.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Oh you're still innocent. It's just being innocent of a crime is not a defense any more. See the article about the little girl shot in the neck by the police, the lap dog gunned down as a threat, the spread of taserings, the shootings of disarmed unresisting suspects caught on Youtube, the rise in cost of legal defense to the point where even a charge will bankrupt a person, the imprisoning and waterboarding of anyone of the wrong skin color in the wrong place at the wrong time, etc.
On the other hand being guilty is no longer a reason for being punished if you have enough pull or cash (at least until you run out).
The biggest problem I have with it is that while it has a process for expungement of people who are acquitted or whose guilty verdict is overturned, I didn't see anything in there requiring states to initiate the process when one of these events occurs.
In other words, it's like the TSA banned flyers list. Easy as hell to get onto, impossible to get off of. Throw in "poorly maintained" and "prone to errors/misfiles" and we'll have the TSA list all over again, except one that juries believe because they saw something about DNA on CSI.
Would this ever happen here in the US (you know, the home of the free)?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Bonus points for getting wax imprints of your Congressman's fingerprints and leaving them in the victims' blood at a crime scene.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
There must be some cause that motivates them to even propose these bills.
The people want it. They like to feel safe. The appearance of safety makes them feel even safer than real safety. So to get reelected, officials push for things that increase the appearance of safety. Their constituents support that.
Learn to love Alaska
Your DNA reveals a lot about you and so unauthorised access to is a clear invasion of privacy, which could only be justified by any protection against crime it causes.
Furthermore, any national database which can act as a primary index for further information held on you is a genuine totalitarian threat.
The outgoing Labour Government, which has been repeatedly noted on /. for its frightening attacks on UK liberty, insisted that the retention of DNA of innocent people was necessary to stop serious crime. However, after 9 years of retaining the DNA of innocent people, this hadn't even aided in the solving of a single serious crime.
The new coalition Government is committed to only retaining DNA of convicted criminals and temporary retention for those charged with violent and sexual offences, a model already applied in Scotland.
It should be noted that DNA is retained from crime scenes and that DNA of arrestees is checked against that before being destroyed. This is a world apart from the blanket retention that the outgoing Goverment pretended was necessary to solve certain cases.
Three reasons I can think of are based on what I understand from the UK - where we have the dubious honour of being several years ahead of the US in this:
1. Such databases are fantastically expensive to set up and maintain. (Well, it's not the database per se that's expensive, more setting up and managing all the processes that will involve taking DNA samples, getting them into the computer and then matching up DNA data with evidence collected at the scene).
Not ideal when your country is buried in a mountain of debt.
2. Such databases are of dubious benefit. I can't remember the exact numbers, but I do recall that some enterprising journalist submitted an FOIA request and worked out that for every arrest carried out as a result of the DNA database they'd had to take the DNA of hundreds of thousands of people. At such great expense it would probably have been cheaper and more effective (ie. resulted in more arrests) to simply spend the money on hiring more police officers.
Unfortunately the media loves a government taking a "tough stance" on crime, and there's nothing that gets them excited like a computer system that promises the world, even if it almost certainly will not deliver it.
3. Already mentioned elsewhere: with current technology we don't store all the data that comprises the entirety of a person's DNA - just a subset. Most of the theories concerning how likely a false-positive is to occur have never really seen much testing in reality, so we don't know how accurate they are. What we do know is the number of people you're going to put on the database is high enough that false positives are a dead cert. Bit of a shame, therefore, that most lay juries have spent the last 20 years being brainwashed that DNA evidence is utterly foolproof.
In Australia recently, all DNA evidence was thrown out of court because of the "poorly maintained" thing in the State of Victoria. It appears the forensics lab got caught with bad paperwork and contaminated samples. Following from that is a High Court challenge to DNA evidence being allowed as the sole claim for guilt. The upshot of that, is that police will not even be able to get arrest warrents on DNA evidence alone. They might have to do some good old fashioned detective work.
Don't need a movement per se. Because human nature is to consider personal rather than societal impact, it's perfectly natural for police and prosecutors to support this kind of BS. (Fortunately, they don't get to make the laws, but IMO their voices carry far more weight than they should.)
Red tape is an unpleasant part of any job, and as an honest cop, of course you're not going to go for a warrant until you're damned sure you're right anyway, so it must feel like a waste of time at best (when you offer evidence to support probable cause, and they issue a warrant), and downright obstructionism at worst
(when, for whatever reason (good or bad -- some judges are corrupt, too), they won't give you the warrant, even though you _know_ you're right). So, yeah, it streamlines your job and lets you catch bad guys quicker; what could be wrong with that?
Same thing, more or less, for the prosecutor's office; he gets appointed/elected to put bad guys behind bars, and (assuming he's honest) he's not even going to prosecute someone unless he knows they did it. But with juries being so reluctant to convict, a little more evidence to lock the case up solid is often beneficial, and never hurts.
(Of course, if you're a crooked cop or prosecutor, then it's even more obvious you won't like warrants... ;))
Then the politicians, of course, have a choice: they can support the law, appearing tough on crime, caring about the children*, and avoid being blamed by police or prosecutors for hindering them in the fight against crime.
Or they can oppose it, saying something about personal freedom, limited government, due process, and innocent-until-proven-guilty -- granted, this will win favor with the far-right gun-toting libertarian kooks, and the far-left pot-smoking libertarian kooks. Then in the next election, their opponent will rip them a new orifice or two by locating a single criminal who would have been caught one crime sooner if the law had passed (or, if the law did pass, one who was caught by it and presumably would still be at large otherwise), and making a series of campaign ads out of it.
Guess which way they go?
* note that sex offenses against a minor are included as well as sex offenses capable of earning more than 1 year sentence.
Are there any 1yr sex offenses against children, and if so, should they be lumped in this class?
Who cares -- "sex offenses against a minor" means you are protecting our children!
It's now:
"You're guilty of something; We've Just not decided what it is yet..."
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Ok, as I've posted, I just finished a five year bid in the Feds. When I was first arrested, I was held at the very miserable Wyatt Detention Facility in Rhode Island. I had not gone to trial nor plead out, so was not a convicted criminal at the time.
My Judge ordered a cardiac study done, as I was having heart problems, so I was sent to a fed medical center at FMC Devens as a pre-trial detainee. The day I arrived I was required to give a DNA specimen, which they get with a finger stick and blood drops on a card. I mentioned I was pre-trial, but was told if I refused, I would be "four pointed" (cuffed to a metal bunk by all four limbs) and the specimen taken by force. This is the usual course for people arrested (but not convicted) in the Feds. Some may have had different experiences, but I was one of many I met with similar treatment.
So this bill seems to be nothing new.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
The chances of two given people having the same DNA fingerprint are tiny. So if the police already suspect someone of a crime, based on other reasons, then a DNA fingerprint match is good corroborating evidence.
However if you look for everyone that has the same DNA fingerprint as your sample in an entire city/state/country, you will almost certainly find multiple matches. In this case, the DNA match means absolutely nothing, but Jurors will treat it with the same weight as they did in the first case, because they don't understand statistics. Combine that with the fact that the defendant has had prior arrests (that's how he got in the database) and that is often enough to secure a conviction of an innocent man, even more so if he is poor and/or black.
Our justice system already convicts too many innocent people. Giving the government a tool that will result in more is a horrible idea.
Don't Even Need The Arrest...
How long before a swab is required to cross the border?
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
TV. I suppose movies have something to do with it too.
Think about it. In just about any TV show or movie, the bad guys are the ones who ask for lawyers. They're the ones who demand warrants. They're the ones who refuse to allow the police to search their car. You can always spot the bad guy on TV: he's the one talking about "civil rights." Any time you see a guy on TV stand up for his civil rights, you know he's the bad guy.
And it goes beyond that. In fiction, warrants only cause harm. Thanks to the delay in getting the warrant, the terrorists manage to kill people. The kidnapper kills their victim. Whatever. The warrant is always a block to the good guys.
People see these TV shows where the police have these magic DNA databases and warrants serve only to allow the guilty to go free. And so you get a push to prevent those pesky warrants that stopped the Valiant Cops from saving the Damsel in Distress because they weren't allowed to just bust into the Bad Guy's Lair without first getting a warrant.
Too many people think CSI is real and that cops never make mistakes. That's why people push to allow cops to bypass warrants: they think every cop is Jack Bauer, struggling against The System to protect Real Americans.
Here's an argument for you: the state has no right to any amount of my flesh.
None. Zero. Nada.
I'll pay taxes with only minor grumbling: "render on to Caesar what is Caesar's", and all. But my flesh is not Caesar's.
And I don't have a problem with people who have shown that the are a threat to the rights of others, being placed under the close supervision of the state, even including losing to some degree the right to make choices about their bodies. But this proposal is not about convicts, it's about presumed-innocent arrestees; and a population-wide database would be that much worse.
The only argument in favor of such a database is that it makes live easier for cops. There's a term for a nation where laws are made on that basis: police state.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Somewhere in the Middle East, there is a group of Al Qaeda operatives sitting around smoking hookah under a banner that reads "Mission Accomplished"
And in the corner is one lone jihadi, the one who went to the notoriously liberal University of Tehran and who everyone says thinks too much, muttering "But this is but one small victory in a long and costly war! That banner and its declaration are completely inappropriate and premature!"
The enemies of Democracy are
If you're a Human (or even just a warm blooded mammalian) your DNA is constantly pouring off of you everywhere you go...
Billions of skin cells are falling off of your body (1.5g per day), and you shed hair follicles constantly as well.
Your saliva is in the disposable cup you tossed into the refuse bin.
Think that DNA from the cells in someone's pubic region should be solid proof that's admissible in rape cases? If yes: YOU'RE WRONG.
Have you ever seen pubic hair on and around a public toilet or urinal -- Guess where it came from? YOU (at some point).
Additionally, male mammals (including Humans) excrete semen that is left in their urethra when they urinate after having been sexually stimulated.
Your DNA is by no means private, and the appearance of it at a crime scene doesn't prove anything at all.
Any premeditation on the part of murderers, rapists or thieves could easily include following YOU around (esp if you fit their physical profile) for a few hours collecting "evidence" that YOU did the crime.
Inappropriate conclusions are being made based on the presence of DNA evidence.
The only thing that YOUR DNA being found at a crime scene really proves is that you (might) exist.
(For plausible non-existence of living entities even given the presence of DNA see: stem cell research & gene therapy).
"Not one Democrat voted against" seems an odd way to word it. Why not actually give the totals? There are 435 Representatives, but the given 357 yes / 32 no count only adds up to 389. That means the difference of 46 were conveniently absent or didn't vote. And there are currently 253 Democrats and 178 Republicans in the House, so that means even if all the nonvoting ones this time were Republican, fully 100 Republicans voted for it. (And I'd like to hear the excuses of the members who didn't vote, from both parties).
I can't call a bill that more than half of the opposition voted for anything but bipartisan, so why word the results in a partisan way? The blame should correctly fall on *all but the 32 who voted no*.
And third, you can be FRAMED with DNA. It is not difficult, and it is hard to "prove your innocence", which seems to be the necessity now. I can frame someone with DNA far easier than trying to frame them with fingerprints...
I refuse to give my DNA. It is my sourcecode (4-bit sequence) and is copyright my parents (& myself via inheritance). No state should have the right to forcibly take my sourcecode and have the means to create clones or test-tube children of mine without my consent.
It is comparable to rape (rapist forcibly impregnates woman and creates child without woman's consent) and child kidnapping (means to create children without parent's care).
http://www.object404.com
Camping Tip: Bear bells provide safety for hikers in grizzly country. The tricky part is getting them on the bears.
You're doing it wrong. The bells announce dinnertime.
As for the DNA database, ALL politicians should automatically be sampled (this should be mandatory) just to have the samples on file when the crooks er... I mean politicians get busted for the crimes they obviously perpetrated.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
In other words, it's like the TSA banned flyers list.
I'd like to know how the "no fly" list passes Constitutional muster, when the 5th amendment requires that due process be provided before one is deprived of life, liberty or property. It doesn't really seem compatible with the spirit of that amendment to deny people their rights and then provide them with an appeals process.
I'd also like to extend a big fat middle finger to the idiots that are whining about the "terror gap" and the need to prevent people on the no fly list from purchasing guns. One wishes that they could see past their hoplophobia long enough to realize that they are advocating for a policy that would allow the US Attorney General to deprive American citizens of their civil rights without needing to go before a judge or jury. Scary stuff.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Anyone confused at all why Democrats would not vote against this measure need to read Liberal Facism.
When your body belongs to the state why should it matter if they force you to give blood or not? You live at the pleasure of the state. The state knows best after all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I would not expect them to require it.
California already takes DNA from any adult that is arrested of a felony or a crime that could be charged as a felony. People that have been arrested during politcal demonstrations and released with no charges have had their cheeks swabbed. To make matters worse, a person must wait three years before they can request an expungement, which a judge must order but a prosecutor can veto. That is right, no charges have to be filed and the state could keep your DNA forever. The ACLU has filed suit and they asked for a preliminary injunction. The prelim was denied in federal court in December 2009 with the judge stating that DNA is just like fingerprints and it helps soolve crimes. The lawsuit continues.
Let us not forget, California shares their DNA database with the federal government. There is no requirement that the national DNA database honor an expungement.
Californians can blame themselves for this. Direct democracy in action. Happy times in America.
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
I agree that bypassing normal warrant procedure is not generally idea, however I think some of the claims about what this bill will cause are getting ridiculous.
First of all, it's not going to drastically change the nature of the FBI's DNA database. The only new group of people who will have their DNA forcibly sampled are people arrested of crimes who are not prosecuted, in states where this is not already the law (such a law was passed in CA in 2004)
Second, it's not like we don't already have a huge DNA database. CODIS is the largest DNA database in the world with over 5 million records. If you think such a database will lead to framing, corruption, or otherwise undermining the right to a fair trial, then all those things should be happening already.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_DNA_Index_System
I just found the box to change my sig. Um.... [timeless witticism].
So, acquitted or an over-turned verdict and you can get off the list... but simply being arrested and the charges later being dropped? Is there a process for expungement in that situation?
Generally, yes. In South Dakota, for example, we already have automatic DNA sampling imposed upon anyone *arrested* for a felony. It is part of the booking procedure. If the felony charges are dropped, dismissed, or you are acquitted at trial, you can send a copy of the dismissal order to the state lab and the sample must then be destroyed. This has been the rule for about two years now. (The tricky part is, for cases where the charges get dismissed early-on, you sometimes have to go ask the judge to sign a separate order documenting the dismissal, just so you have something you CAN send to the state lab.)
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.